Computer restarting for no reason

[Will Hay]

Bleedin' thing!
My computer has startedrestarting, no warning, nothing, just restarts.
Really anoying have way through TMPGEnc or worse still through a dvd burn.
I can't remember anything I've installed lately that would cause it, I'd installed CladDVD.net and the corresponding .net package from M$ but other than that nothing much has changed.
I removed Norton Internet Security as I had a feeling that my be contributing but it did reset again last night with Norton off.
Anyone any thoughts?
Should I just re-install WinXP, will that help?
Will

[freak_in_cage_10k]

all i can think that it is flucuations in your power supply- when encoding the cpu is under full load and so even very small flucuations in voltage from the psu (not from the mains supply- psu changes) can lead to instability of the mother board and the processor.

other than that you could try reinstalling all the latest drivers for yor motherboard, + a bios update on your mother board. if that fails it may be worth borrowing some one elses PSU for a bit to see if it happens to you- if it still does i guess it could be winodws playi8ng up but i doubt a restart will solve it- may be worth a try i guess??

[Will Hay]

Thanks man, I'll do some digging.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

np man- prob the easiest thing to do it upate Motherboard bios & drivers first, then drivers for all other hardware, then doing all windows updates, then nicking your friends PSU for a few days, then if none of that works reinstall windows- but this is unlikely to solve your prob!

looking at your pc spec- how powerful is your PSU? a 300 watt should suffice but it MAY be that you are running low on power during v demanding prcesses (eg encoding uses processor at full load, copyign a dvd uses both of the drives + processor so uses power), + you have several hard drives which use even more power, + a raid card which uses more power!!!! so if you possbly can borrow a 350W PSU as it could well be that, because your PSU is insufficient, during full load or using all the drives etc voltage flucuations occur!!!

[Will Hay]

Antec 340w, at the bottom of the spec

[Will Hay]

I never thought about the PSU.
I have a primary hard drive, two additional hdd's and three cdrom's (dvd-r/ram, dvd-rom and a cdrw).
Plus I have an additional fan atatched to the PSU.
That maybe the problem then!
High voltage PSU's seem to be quite expensive, what size would you recommend and what price would you expect to pay?
Thansk again,
Will

[i_am_dave]

Will,

You have probably already thought of this, but. Since your profile says XP Pro, what do you have your computer set to do when it detects an error?

I had a similar issue when I first bought my system. It was set to reboot on error. After I disabled that, I was able to see the nice BSOD and troubleshoot my problem.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

gd point dave- forgot that 1!!! If your cpu or motherboard gets byond a certian temperature sometimes the bios will restart it- could be your prob also?! have a look in the safety settings in your bios to see if this function is enabled, although if u have lots of fans u Will (get it lol :P ok- maybe that was a bit lame!) probably have sufficient air circulation anyway.

there is quite a lot to PSUs than you may think- the realy good ones are very expensive, as in for a 450Watt one your looking at about £80, however, these are mainly aimed for overclockers. to tell u the truth i am not sure what sort of power you will need- i will do a bit of digging for you and let u know in about an hour ok m8???

[Faustus]

Same here, had to disable the auto restart to figure out if it was a crash or a real restart. Over the years I've had 2 pcs with the random restart issue. One turned out to be a short on the system board. The other more recent one was very very hard to track down and turned out to be the RAM combined with XPs AutoRestart function. Of course by the time I figured otu the bad ram I had already replaced my PIII 1ghz with a very cheap XP2k+ ECS combo from fry's ($70 for both) so I just swapped the ram around and called it an upgrade

[freak_in_cage_10k]

ok m8- found this site and there was the following table:

Component Requirement Line(s) Used
AGP Video Card 30 – 50W +3.3V
Average PCI Card 5 – 10W +5V
10/100 NIC 4W +3.3V
SCSI Controller PCI Card 20W +3.3V and +5V
Floppy Drive 5W +5V
CD-ROM 10 – 25W +5V and +12V
DVD-ROM 10 – 25W +5V and +12V
CD-RW 10 – 25W +5V and +12V
7200rpm IDE Hard Drive 5 – 20W +5V and +12V
10,000rpm SCSI Drive 10 – 40W +5V and +12V
Case/CPU Fans 3W (ea.) +12V
Motherboard (w/o CPU or RAM) 25 – 40W +3.3V and +5V
RAM 8W per 128MB +3.3V
Pentium III Processor 38W +5V
Pentium 4 Processor 70W +12V
AMD Athlon Processor 70W +12V

now, i have done rouch calculations for your pc and it comes to about 350W (taking all components at their max cos they are new and are likely to be at full load). However, things are made a little more complex for 2 reasons:

a lot of PSU rate "550W" but they are not capable of providing this kind of power for any length of time- that is just their max at boot up (when everything is on & scanned but not at full load)- so they are no where near as gd as this.

Antech like the psu make you have) have their "True Power" supply rating, which means they can literall deliver this power all the time!!!find out whether your psu is one of the "true" series.

check this place out, they sell PSUs (although DONT buy from them because their return service is REALLY bad!!!) but it should give you a good idea as to how much u may need to spend:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Power_Supplies_123.html

so, if you need about 350W "True" power you may as well get about 400W to keep you safe in the future- however, antechs solution is £75!!!! so if i were you i would check everything else first (including bios overheat settings etc) and try tio borrow someone elses PSU (high rating) so see if that is your problem!

i think you would probably be OK with the Q-Tec 550W Dual Fan (i have this one!) but it may be an idea to try to get it on approval or something?! Ok, so this is not "true power" but im sure it will suffice!

if you want better advice check out the forums here:

www.futuremark.com

just be warned that these are hard core overclockers who need seriously stable voltages so they may over emphasise a little on the quality and rating of PSU needed.

also, thinking on it, it could be a prob with your RAM- if you have 2 sticks try removing one and seeing if the problem occurs??

[Will Hay]

Man, that's superb!
Thanks for that, I'm truly grateful.
Only one stick of memory but funnily enough I added another stick a while back to test it as it wasn't working in a system I built for a pal.
It turned out to be faulty and gave me all kinds of software error when in my machine.
I can only remember the reboots around this time.
The stick isn't in now, do you think it could have done any damage?
Thanks again,
Will

[Will Hay]

One other thing, what's the key for starting in safe mode?
Thanks,
Will

[i_am_dave]

I think it is F8

[freak_in_cage_10k]

yeah, its either F8 or F9, i forget which so i just tap away at both as it starts to boot lol

[troyvcd1]

Also could be your processor overheating.

[zzyzzx]

Try leaving the cover off your PC and see if it still happens. If it doesn't then you have a heating problem.

I had this happen once after I installed some more memory.

[Will Hay]

Problem with testing a different PSU is I don't have anyone with a custom system, I bet all my friends have machines 300w or under.
I've noticed it's restarting a lot just as it boots, it starts up fine and then just as everything has loaded (a couple of things by the clock, Norton AV, ATI launcher etc) it resets.
Of course it also resets when I'm working, like it did half way through editing DV footage in Studio 8 last night
I have a controller card in there with two HDD's on, I think I'll remove that and see what happens, there's been a few occassions where these two HDD's have disapeared so it may be faulty although why this is affecting my primary HDD I have no idea

I may be wrong but opening the case might not help, I would have thought by leaving the case open the circulating air is confined and therefore cooling more hardware.
Isn't like a fridge where if you open it it tries to cool the entire room, and is therefore ineffective?
I might be way of of course, but thanks for the suggestion.
Will

[Will Hay]

Think I'll add another fan too, for the sake of a few quid.
Could it be my primary HDD failing, or is that unlikely?
It's never really been right since I changed my dvd-rom for another, and switched a 80gb HDD for a super-duper 120gb 8mb buffer one but saying that, nothing has really been added that should be a bigger drain on the PSU.
I wonder if I've disturbed and knackered the existing memory, when I tested that other, faulty peice.
Unlikely, right?
Will

[Will Hay]

gd point dave- forgot that 1!!! If your cpu or motherboard gets byond a certian temperature sometimes the bios will restart it- could be your prob also?! have a look in the safety settings in your bios to see if this function is enabled

I must have missed this when I read it first time, I never thought of it either, I'll check it out now.
If this is the answer then it's a simple case of another fan, right?
I have the normal fan on the PSU and I've added one case fan but that might not be enough, right?

although if u have lots of fans u Will (get it lol :P ok- maybe that was a bit lame!

Yep, you were right, it was lame
Will

[freak_in_cage_10k]

i doubt it is your CPU overheating- if this happened then it would more likely freeze. with regards to removing the side of your case- this means that the fan gets cool air from the outside, instead of recycled stuff from around the case so it will reduce the temp of your cpu. however, if you have several intake & outake fans in your case then removing the side does reduce air flow- however, Will, u dont have any intake fans so removing the side should reduce the temp a bit.

removing all non essential drives would put less strain on your PSU and that should tell us whether it is the PSU.

the more i think about it the more i wonder whether it could be the RAM- a corrupt memory module could lead to random reboots. i see you have 1 gig of ram- so remove one 512 stick and leave the pc on for a day to see if it restrts- if it does then swap the ram sticks around and try again! byt he process of elimination this will say whether its your ram or not!

[Will Hay]

I really should update my comp. profile.
I only have one stick of 512mb, I updated the profile to reflect an anticipated purchase of a second stick then, after reading about the problem of two of the same sticks with my motherboard didn't go through with the purchase.
I'll do some testing over the next few days and report back.
Thanks,
Will

[binks120]

hey will ive been offline for days now comeback and read this shit i say he has exactly the prob i have installed a 400w psu checked all connections on to mobo upped the core volage to my cpu and yesterday i reinstalled windows xp
i no my cpu temp is no higher than 55 underload
so have i fixed it ?? will tell you when ive been home it did last the night out thou
will report back m8
ps if its a cpu or memory prob will 3dmark 2001 se not detect it or sandra
bbl binks

[binks120]

no still restarted
how do i stop xp from shutting down when it errors ie auto restart

[binks120]

hey dudes just been told about this ace bit of kit to test ur memory
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

[Will Hay]

hey dudes just been told about this ace bit of kit to test ur memory
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

Excellent, thanks.
I'll run it tonight too.
Will, LS19

[binks120]

hey will how did u get on m8 i removed my older strip of memory the upped the fsb to test it , it now goes higher so i set it back to 148(should be 133) and ran 3dmark2001 it crashed the sys so i set it to 146 no crash my point i lost it sorry
just testing my sys back to norm over 24 hours with only the faster strip
so far so good
ps im also running canopus procoder to stress the system

[mgh]

Problem is with your SMPS. Replace or repair it and things should be OK, i had your problem about six months back.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

wills- any luck m8? have you found your problem yet??

[Will Hay]

Problem is with your SMPS.

You're gonna need to help me out on that one.
W.

[Will Hay]

wills- any luck m8? have you found your problem yet??

What with my little one being a handful I haven't found the time to really spend some time checking it out thoroughly yet
Will